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I like to potter in my garden and I am finally seeing some results with fruits for my labour. I also have a lovely pair of gloves to protect my hands, however I’m all fingers and thumbs when wearing them, so apart from when touching yucky stuff, I usually ditch the gloves.

Ditching the gloves causes dirty, rough hands which is a problem of a night when I like to indulge in my other hobbies of knitting, crochet and embroidery. There is nothing more annoying than thread catching on rough skin.

My solution is a home made hand scrub. I made a batch today to share with some friends this Thursday. If you would like a copy of my recipe leave me a message in the comments.

I have some rather clever friends who like to dye knitting yarn. One of the techniques they use is to paint the yarn on knitted fabric. As I have a number of knitting machines I knit the undyed blanks ready for the dying.

When knitting a shawl the final task is blocking. This involves soaking the shawl and then stretching it out to dry. It allows the work to relax into shape and for any lacework to open up. These photos show the benefit of blocking, this shawl has ‘grown’ to almost twice the size it was straight off the needles.

The theme of this blog is Finished is Better than Perfect, something that certainly hit home today. A cardigan for a niece in Canberra is almost finished (finally) it just needs the (perfect) buttons. As anyone who has ever dabbled in knitting, sewing, crochet, quilting, embroidery in fact any creative art will know, there is always a button stash. The biggest issue is usually finding enough of the ‘right’ button. As the photos will attest, I might have found the ‘perfect’ button but I need 4 and only have 3. Which do you prefer?